A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (13 page)

Joe had seemed so full of energy that afternoon, but Jim was right, he had overdone himself. Besides they needed the extra room at the house and, unless she missed her guess when looking at the bloody, rutted fields that used to be farms but now were littered with the bodies of wounded and dead, both armies would require every inch of room that could be spared.

In the quiet of darkness, she thought she could still hear the moaning of the men, but they were too far northwest of town to be close to the battlefields. Tomorrow she would return and continue to help. If only she had flour and water, the sourdough starter. Apples and carrots, the onions . . . She pushed the memory of plenty away. No use tormenting herself with what they’d had only hours ago. It was all gone now, and if not all gone, it would soon be eaten by the Rebs.

She searched the ground for sticks, kindling. Her hands hovered until her eyes adjusted enough to see the small dead branches. She returned with her treasure in tow, surprised to find Gerta wrapping a length of bandage around Joe’s chest.

“Where . . . ?”

Gerta’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she stood and pointed downward. A clean rip at the hem of her dress showed where
Joe’s new bandage had come from. Beth’s throat swelled at the magnitude and extent of her grandmother’s sacrifice.

Joe woke long enough to take but a few sips of the tea. His eyelids grew heavy and he grimaced and rubbed his right side with his left hand. The new bandage must have stirred discomfort. She needed sleep, but knew it would not come easy, not with the terrible events of the day to be processed and considered.

“You were limping.”

She started and met Joe’s gaze, his hazy focus on her sharpened. Covering her reaction, she tried to downplay the injury. “It’s nothing.” What would he think if he knew she was crippled and it was permanent?

His quiet stare penetrated the wall she’d created after Riley’s reaction, and the knowledge that Joe’s acceptance meant more than it should. “If it hurts, then it’s not ‘nothing.’ ”

“The men need me. Need Gerta. And someone has to keep an eye on her.”

The spark of a smile lifted his lips. “Is that her I hear?”

Though not overly loud, Gerta’s soft snores nevertheless filled the room. Beth didn’t mind. For her it was evidence that her grandmother was getting the rest she so needed. She’d been worried to see her energy waning and the paleness of her complexion growing ever more obvious.

She filled a mug with the little bit of fresh water Jim had brought in at some point. Joe lifted himself, her hand on his neck to support his head. Heat radiated from him and the effort to drink leached away the little strength he mustered.

“Will you read to me?”

Joe’s quiet request seemed a perfect remedy. “I made sure to hide your haversack with our things. Jim put them up on a crossbeam in the cellar, out of sight.” She grinned. “No one bothered them at all.”

He blinked, long and slow. “Thank you.”

Heat bloomed and began a slow creep up her neck as she realized how proud of herself she sounded. She dug in his haversack for the Bible and pulled the stool and lamp closer. A crisp sheet of paper slipped out. Joe held out his hand for it. He unfolded it and squinted, lips moving as he read. When he finished, his hand fell to his side, his mouth a firm line.

“Bad news?”

“It’s a letter I was writing.” He turned his face away.

She didn’t know what else to say and decided it best to let the subject go. She thumbed through a few more pages of the Bible. How long had it been since she’d read from the Word? “Where do you want me to begin?”

“Galatians.”

She raised her eyebrows, aware of the way he studied her. For the split second their gazes locked, he seemed at conflict with himself. “Your favorite?” she asked.

“My father used to read it to us.”

Beth turned to Galatians, her fingers on the pages recalling the order of the books of the New Testament. She preferred the stories. She angled the Bible to better capture the stream of weak light and smoothed the page. The chapter introduced Paul, and then the fourth verse flowed and the words sank deep into her conscience. “Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.”

Was there anything more evil than war? Hatred that drove man against man?

“It makes me wonder why we’re here,” Joe inserted into the long silence. “Fighting. Dying.”

A sharp stab made her sit up straight. “You are not dying.”

His gaze washed over her, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. “I’d like to live.” He tried to raise his right arm. “Not much use I’ll be to anyone.”

“You still have a heart to give and a life to live.”

Now his smile broke through. “Very poetic, and I can see that you believe it by what you’re giving to us. The enemy.”

She broke eye contact. Joe was a soldier. Why did his life matter so much to her? She didn’t want to think about it anymore. “My father used to say that war was generated because a man took a stand for what he believed in.”

“It sounds noble.” He swallowed and turned his face away, but not before she saw the lines of sadness mar his brow. “Until you see it up close.”

She closed the Bible. Haunting images, residue from the day’s battle, drifted over her, and she didn’t want to talk anymore. Yet she knew she would not sleep. The oil in the lamp was low. She picked up the lantern and lifted it to blow out the light, meeting Joe’s stare. He wrestled with his own demons, and she had no answers for him, nor the strength nor the will to delve deeper. She would be out on the fields tomorrow trying to understand mercy and love in the midst of pain and despair. Joe’s green eyes burned in her mind. She set the lantern aside and turned down the wick as low as she dared, a sudden need to touch something of home and family rising in her.

“You should sleep.”

“As should you. Rest your leg.”

“I-I won’t be able to. I thought I might work on the quilt.”

Beth stretched out until her fingers could grasp her bundle Jim had set nearby. She unknotted the top and stopped, realizing it wasn’t the clothes or the shoes she sought, but the package from her mother. The quilt and the meaning behind the colors and squares. It was home to her, hearkening to the
days when peace was a reality and her childhood innocence was intact.

She matched another square to the three, checked the length of thread, and began. It was work that focused her attention on the length of her stitches and the certainty of the next movement, and the next, never wavering from the routine until another block was added. Guilt edged every stitch as the oil in the lantern dwindled.

She blinked and realized the cabin had grown colder, that Joe slept, on his side, facing her, as if he’d been watching her for a long time.

Reaching out, she touched his tousled hair and smoothed it back from his face. He was handsome. Kind. A Rebel soldier caught in the mire of a war that had stripped him of so much. Only Jim lay awake, the whites of his eyes showing his level of alertness.

“Almost done?”

She held up the five squares. Flexed and relaxed her fingers to relieve the stress of the close work just as she’d seen her mother do countless times. “Not quite.”

She splayed her hand, tracing the outline of her stitches, the subtle yet bold pattern. “Am I keeping you awake?”

“No. Just thinking. Praying. Listening.”

She folded the blocks up and placed them back on the pile of personal belongings, knotting the top again, not knowing if they would be forced to move from their little hideaway in the woods or not.

Lying down next to Gerta, she settled her skirts, raked her fingers through the knots of her hair and braided it into a long tail that snaked down her back. Morning and the continued fighting would come all too soon.

September 18, 1862

Joe felt like he was melting from the inside out. Judging from the darkness, he guessed it must be night and he wondered what woke him. Or who. He gazed around the interior of the room and worked hard to place where he was. Memory came back in slow stages as he recalled the house, the wounded. Gerta and Jim. Beth. She sat beside him and leaned into his line of vision.

“Bad dream?”

He ran his tongue over dry lips. Every move felt like he’d been out in the blazing sun too long.

Beth dipped a cloth into water and wrung it out. Water trickled back into the basin. Joe could only think how good the water would taste. He was so hot.

The coolness of the cloth felt like a chill winter breeze against his skin and he welcomed it even as gooseflesh rose on his arms. Meredith would not welcome such trivial tasks. She would hate caring for the wounded—really, for anyone other than herself.

Joe tried to place the name with the face, and how he would know such a personal thing about someone. Details danced just out of range of his throbbing head. He tried to raise his
hand to his head but his fingers touched something stiff. Paper. In the semidarkness, he raised the single sheet and a flood of memory came back as he recognized the paper as the letter he’d been writing home to Meredith.

The debutante intent on defying her father by marrying a man below her station. He’d been flattered and awed by her fragile beauty. Her father thought him an opportunist taking advantage of his wayward daughter’s affections.

Dearest Meredith,

The war is nothing as I thought it would be. I’m sure there are many other men who feel the same. Ben and I camp tonight in a meadow outside of Frederick. Tomorrow we move out toward a gap in South Mountain and on toward Hagerstown.

As I’m sure you do not want to hear the details of daily life, I’ll exclude them from this letter.

It was as far as he had gotten, not knowing what else to say. She was lovely, but shrewd and cunning and he suspected he was more a toy for the spoiled girl to cling to in spite of her father’s demand to surrender it, than a man to be loved and honored. Around campfires when there was nothing to do and another battle was imminent, the men talked of home to keep their minds off the possibility of death that stared them between the eyes. He’d heard his friends speak of their girls, the love and longing evident in their voices. Why didn’t he feel like that? How was it he had so easily forgotten who should be the most important person to him?

He didn’t need to linger too long over the question. Meredith had been a mistake. He’d known it when he was penning the
letter just as he realized it now. He’d known for some time the reality of the relationship. Realized that Meredith didn’t really expect a proposal nor want one—she simply adored the attention and stirring her father’s anger.

Compared to what he saw in Gerta and in Beth, Meredith’s pledge of love lost its value. She would expect a lifestyle he could not provide and she would come to hate him, or demand that he acquiesce and go to work for her father.

“Would you like me to put that away for you?”

He rolled his head toward Beth. “It’s a letter.”

“I see that.”

“I need to finish it.” The very words he’d spoken were like a benediction. He folded the letter and rested it on his stomach, wondering what he would say. How to say it . . .

“Are you right-handed?”

Beth provided the very excuse he needed. He would release Meredith knowing she would not endure a man rendered a cripple.

“I can finish it for you.”

He knew it was the right thing to do, but doing it, actually breaking off the relationship with Meredith, left him with nothing. Not Ben. Not his mother . . . He closed his eyes and swallowed against the surge of emotion. “Maybe later.”

I’m all alone
.

The cloth was on his face again. His neck. His cheeks. It felt so good. He opened his eyes briefly and caught Beth’s soft gaze. She was disheveled and tired-looking, but her eyes held such a kindness and understanding. As if she could read his heart and mind. Her hand stilled and she drew back, sitting up straight. Joe’s heart pounded harder and he wondered if it was the fever, or his mind playing tricks on him, but when Beth’s hand slipped into his, he didn’t feel so alone anymore.

Beth sat back, flushed. As soon as Joe’s eyes closed, she chided herself for thinking something had changed in Joe’s warm, green eyes. He was feverish. Delirious, more than likely. Yet he’d been talking clearheaded . . . She quashed the errant flow of her thoughts even as his fingers squeezed hers and his breathing evened out as evidence of sleep.

It meant nothing.

She sighed and slipped her hand from his. Her eyes landed on the single sheet of paper and curiosity drew her to unfold it. He seemed to dread the idea of finishing it and she wondered if she should simply sit down and write it for him. Let the person know that he was recovering from a wound that had left his right hand weakened.

My dearest Meredith

The words jumped out at her, accusing. She tamped back the panic. Meredith could be anyone. A sister. The rest of the letter didn’t mention anything that would give a clue, though she couldn’t help the spark of satisfaction that it, at least, didn’t seem overly personal. Maybe Meredith was nothing more than a family friend.